


Golden Girl

by livilla



Category: Bat Out Of Hell: The Musical - Steinman
Genre: Adult Fear, Angst, Character Study, F/M, It gets a little dark, Missing Scene, Parenting Feels, Sorry Not Sorry, the source is pretty dark anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-30
Updated: 2017-08-30
Packaged: 2018-12-21 18:22:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11949999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/livilla/pseuds/livilla
Summary: Sloane sat and thought and drank.





	Golden Girl

**Author's Note:**

> So, this has been a while. I haven't written in months and haven't posted anything in even longer. Nervous is putting it lightly! So, this is based on the version I personally saw, the London version, in which Who Needs the Young directly follows the fight with The Lost, before the conversation Raven and Sloane have about who The Lost are. Unbeta'd so any mistakes are mine! Let me know if there's anything weird that needs editting. Enjoy!

Sloane sat and thought and drank.

It was all she seemed to do lately. The world ticked by without taking any significant notice of her, no matter how much she screamed. Something was coming; there was a tinge of metal in the air and it felt like a warning. And she couldn’t stop it.

She focussed on the glass on the ground in front of her. She’d left it at the other end of the couch when she’d shifted positions to get comfortable. She slipped further on the soft material as she reached for it, skirt bunching up around her hips. She yanked it down, irritated, and wondered why she bothered – she hadn’t been comfortable in a long time. Sloane eyed the trappings of luxury around her and sighed.

She should be grateful. There was a roof over her head and food on the table… and endless booze. But she knew better than most how quickly it could be lost.

Loud voices outside. She jumped and sloshed the dregs of her drink on the cushions. Fuck. There were always loud voices outside. She recognised them – it was always the same voices. Falco, The Lost. It was going to end badly one of these days. Maybe that was what was coming.

Sloane stood and refilled the glass carefully. Falco. Her husband, she thought with an internal scoff. Idiot. But… he was **her** idiot. And they had been happy and in love. Once. Long ago and far away. Before the world had turned to total shit and her husband had somehow ended up the last man standing at the top.

She flopped back down onto the couch and held the glass to the light, watching the reflection dance across the ceiling. They really had gotten together too young and too fast but it had been so wonderful and exciting. All she’d ever wanted: a devil in a leather jacket with a fast car and the roof down. A hot summer night by the lake… Seventeen was a hell of an age to find out you were going to have a kid. Eighteen by the time Raven had come along and changed their world.

Raven. Her perfect little baby. God, she loved her. Even when they fought and clashed and she reminded Sloane of herself at that age… Well, she had never been that innocent. Her father had let her out of the house into the big, bad world. And then Falco had opened her eyes to the rest of it. It hadn’t been a happy place to grow up for any of them – it had been going to hell long before The Lost. Economic collapse, environmental disaster, riots – and her poor, little girl remembered scraps of it. The dream suppressants were the only thing that stopped her from waking up screaming. And that little prayer… _The sea is watching the sky, the sky is watching the sea, nothing will ever happen, nothing will **ever** happen._ Easy to convince a four year old, much harder in a seventeen year old. Sloane knew that her daughter felt things deeper than most. She just wished it hadn’t lead to this affinity with The Lost. It would just end up breaking her heart. Or worse – it could take her away for good.

She choked back a sob and wiped an errant tear. Strat. She wanted to curse him for his connection to Raven – but he reminded her so much of Falco. Of how he used to be and maybe still was. So passionate and protective of his family. She’d partied with The Lost on a couple of occasions when she’d snuck out after the household was asleep. She could see how close they all were. They had rough lives, scraping together an existence, but the mentality that came with the mutation – forever young, no responsibilities – meant that all they cared about was not losing it.

She had sympathy for it.

The first couple of years after Raven was born had been like that, in that shitty, tiny apartment on the edge of town they’d shared. Revolution, such as it turned out, had been plotted in their tiny kitchen, though only a few of them had lived through it. Sloane still had no idea where they’d gotten any money from – there’d been so few jobs. Probably nothing legal but with the fucked up corruption of the government they’d been stuck with before it had been forcibly removed, like it mattered. Their little family had found moments of happiness somehow. She remembered music – Falco singing to them both, playing guitar; Raven giggling and bouncing on the threadbare rug, tiny fingers catching on Sloane’s hair, fascinated by the colour.

The music had long since faded, replaced by the strain of holding the city together. It had changed Falco – it had changed both of them. She worried he’d fallen too far into the role of dictator, too far to come back. She wasn’t stupid; there was a trail of bodies leading straight to their door and sometimes the guilt was suffocating.

She drank again, hands shaking. She knew what happened in the basement and the innocent often got caught up with the real monsters that stalked the city. She’d let a few of them go – and Falco never said anything when he found them gone.

Sloane hoped that meant the idealist was still in there somewhere. God help her, she still loved him… she just hated this empty, brutal life circumstances had forced her into. And had changed her husband into someone she barely recognised. The charity work just felt like a last, desperate grasp for meaning. And now Raven was nearly eighteen. The idea terrified her. She knew, with a certainty that pushed her to reach for the bottle to try and shake it, that this birthday would be a catalyst for whatever was coming. There was no telling if Raven would freeze; they still heard reports of new kids freezing, with even fewer clues as to why. They could lose Raven in less than a day… and then what?

A thousand possibilities suggested themselves, each shittier than the last. Sloane drowned it out with another drink. She needed to get out for a while; she just had to keep the façade up for a little longer. Maybe she could drag Raven with her. Try to create another happy memory in what limited time could be left.

The door swung open and Sloane schooled her facial expression into cold detachment.

“Can you believe they threatened to destroy my new housing development?”

She looked at Falco, bruised and shirtless in the dim light.

“Disastrous.”


End file.
